Stephen Curry #30 of the Golden State Warriors celebrates with Draymond Green #23 against the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 1 of the 2018 NBA Finals at ORACLE Arena on May 31, 2018 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

Everyone knew it was coming. From the most rabid of fans in the stands to the last player on the Houston bench (sorry Nene Hilario), everyone in the Toyota Center knew the Warriors were going to come out of the locker room after halftime swinging. It’s what they do.

As their performance in the Western Conference Finals showed, no team is better than the Warriors in the third quarter. It’s when their already considerable talent shines brightest and when the team pulls away or overtakes their competition. Regardless of what happens in the first half, the Warriors are able to adjust and make the right plays in the third quarter.

And even though their competitors know it is coming, they seemingly cannot do anything to thwart the momentum. The results are staggering. Heading into Thursday night’s overtime win over Cleveland in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, Golden State had outscored their playoff opponents this year by an unprecedented 130 points in the third quarter. Then in Game 1 against the Cavs, they turned a tie game into a six-point lead during the pivotal third.

Head coach Steve Kerr of the Golden State Warriors. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

No other team in the NBA is close to being as efficient starting the second half.

If your company hasn’t been performing in this first half of the year like you know it’s capable of doing, maybe it’s time to take a lesson from the NBA champs. The Warriors have a tendency to play “ok” in the first half (their own description), but then they come out of halftime and everything changes.

Halftime in a typical NBA game is a chance for the coach to rally his players and tell them what adjustments to make. But that’s not how the Warriors operate.

What are the Warriors doing differently in their halftime locker room? For starters, Coach Steve Kerr typically asks the players about what happened in the first half and opens the door for suggestions. He brings them into the process, so they can all learn together.

That’s the key. They use their halftime to figure out how they need to turn it up. They ask, “What did we leave on the table in the first half and how can we not do that again?” That’s what we all should be doing. It’s trite, but doing the same thing over and over again, while expecting a different result is, truly, the definition of insanity. Great teams realize that they have the rare opportunity to stop everything and start fresh with a full half of experience behind them...and a full half of opportunity ahead.

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The same could happen in your business. If your revenue is falling or you’re not meeting expectations, are you looking at what didn’t work and using that knowledge to plan ahead? Is it a conversation that involves the troops or just the leaders?

While you’re discussing what didn’t work, be careful to not point fingers. That’s what often happens when an organization is struggling. No one wants the blame, so they try to place it on someone else. Pointing fingers is not part of the Warrior’s culture and it’s hard to argue with their success. During halftime they are all talking, all encouraging each other, being optimistic but realistic about their situation.

Curry recalled a moment in the first half of Game Seven when Draymond Green lost the ball and Houston’s James Harden turned the mistake into a basket. Curry had seen such moments tear other teams apart, with players pointing fingers and shouting blame. “It could have splintered,” Curry said in his press conference. “It could have been a moment where guys could have gone their separate ways.”

But neither the finger-pointing nor the splintering happened.

Stephen Curry #30 of the Golden State Warriors speaks to the media after their 101 to 92 win over the Houston Rockets in Game Seven of the Western Conference Finals of the 2018 NBA Playoffs at Toyota Center on May 28, 2018 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Bob Levey/Getty Images)

The Warriors’ ability to manage the transition in the second half is crucial to the team’s success. The easiest thing to do is to point at each other, to shift responsibility; the sales team didn’t do its job, engineering fouled up the product, marketing didn’t understand what we were trying to sell, shipping was late all the time. Or you can realize that we have half of the year behind us, but the game isn’t over, so we can use this as an incredible opportunity to succeed. If your company is failing, the game is over if you continue in the same bad habits and processes.

Take the Rockets in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals. They missed 27 consecutive 3-pointers, an NBA playoff record, and didn’t change their strategy until it was too late. The concept that your strategy from the beginning will always work is a fallacy. You have to be willing to adjust.

The Rockets just kept jacking it up, regardless of the evidence that their shots weren’t falling. There are other ways to score, but they stuck with their strategy. There’s such a thing as too much optimism, that things will always regress to a norm, but that’s not life. The more you attempt a failed strategy, the worse things will get. On the court, the rim starts looking smaller, your legs aren’t getting any fresher, and the shots become more and more difficult.

In business, it happens the same way. You start the year with a plan and tons of optimism, but by the end of May, it may be obvious that things aren’t working.

Do you discuss with your team what went wrong, keep your “pointy” fingers in your pockets, make a mid-year adjustment, and come out in Q3 swinging? Or do you stick with the same strategy, hoping like the Houston Rockets, that your shots will eventually fall?

During halftime of Game 6, Draymond Green came over to Steph Curry and gave him some advice that came from the greatest Coach of all time, John Wooden. He told Steph to “Be quick, but don’t hurry.” Let’s keep that in mind as we are evaluating our mid-year strategies. Be quick to find corrections, but don’t be in a hurry or panic.

You have time, if you start now, to be strong in the third quarter. Start your comeback today!

I am a keynote speaker, corporate business leadership coach, 11-time New York Times Best-selling author and longtime associate editor for Sports Illustrated. As a speaker, I have worked with audiences as diverse as Fortune 500 companies, associations and leadership forums o...